Remembrance of Things Rachel
by gluon
Summary: Puck is alone after singing "Over the Rainbow" with Mr. Schue. Seeing Rachel with Finn hurt. Puck recalls moments in his brief time with her.  Reality based.
1. First Kiss

Puck sat in his truck in the school parking lot, staring out the window, the keys still in his pocket. There was no place he wanted to go, no one he wanted to see, nothing he wanted to do. There was a knot in his stomach as hard and large as a baseball, like a cancer a doctor had just told him would require two years of painful radiation and chemo and even then he had only a one in ten chance of surviving. Rachel Berry's head on fucking Finn Hudson's shoulder and his bloody hand resting halfway up her bare inner thigh in public (and he damn well knew where it would be in private) hurt, but not as much as he knew for certain it was going to hurt for two more years of high school. All the Cheerio and cougar sexual morphine in the world were not going to alleviate the pain to come.

The worst part of it was there was no one to blame but himself. The wound was self-inflicted, the product of an immature, self-created persona. He didn't deserve Rachel Berry, or anyone remotely in her exalted league; not now, not ever, not as he was. It was an "existential crisis" – a term he learned from her, as he did so much else – and he couldn't cope with it.

Over the Rainbow. Yes, that's where the Rachel Berrys of this world waited for their lovers, and he didn't know the way and he didn't have the fare. The duet with Mr. Schue went very well. He knew that because…because Rachel Berry, the sole arbiter of such matters, said so with a smile at him during the performance, and coming up to him afterwards and kissing his cheek. It was then that he again smelled her shampoo, some organic, herbal, yogurt, goat milk concoction from the Pyrenees or Shangri-la or wherever, more intoxicating than any pussy, something that he had come to associate with sore testicles and a yearning that allowed no peace. That smell evoked detailed memories of a brief time that had sped past, when a possibility slipped away before he could even grasp how much it mattered. …

He thought of the first time he got close to her, close enough for long enough to remember the smell of her for a lifetime.

"Wanna make out?"

"Sure."

He took off his shoes and lay back on her bed, smiling, confident of conquest. She came to the side of the bed, pulled down on her short skirt in a final gesture of modesty, and climbed up to lie on top of him and kissed his lips. Hers had the slightest tremor, but it seemed deliberate, not out of nervousness. She flared her lips so that the softest parts, inside, touched his, and she applied and released the pressure against him in a slow rhythm. That's when Puck understood for the first time how Finn Hudson, or anyone else including himself, could jizz his shorts from a single Rachel Berry kiss, and he needed to get her off of him pronto or he'd have to move out of Lima. And all of this without even the tiniest hint of tongue.

Puck pretended to knock her off accidentally with a sweep of a "lovely" arm and lay there with beads of sweat on his brow. He tried to put out of his mind the sense that he could feel her warmth and moistness right through her skirt, or he might have gone off untouched, and then Ohio wouldn't have been big enough to hide in. She wiped his forehead and kissed it, asking worriedly, "Are you all right? Did I do something wrong? Don't you like how I kiss?"

"No, no, no. You kiss beautifully, believe me, trust me. I should know. Where'd you learn to do that?"

"A lady doesn't kiss and tell," she said with a trace of a smirk.

_A smirk! I do the smirking, not the chick! What the fuck!_

He needed a timeout. He needed to settle his mind and get his shit together before he went back in. Then it came to him. She kissed like she sang. Complete concentration, practiced technique, emotional communication driven by an internal passion. And the effects on the males in her audience were similar: spinal chills and phallic stiffness.

_Did she just peek at my groin? Did she just smile at my package? Yeah, a standing ovation. Take a bow. Satisfied?_

The notion that his reactions were not due to her technique but to his feelings for her did not occur to him until it was too late.

An hour or so later, they lay on their sides, turned toward each other, lips sore from kissing, her head on his outstretched arm, her eyes closed, some of her hair in his face. His fingers were on her bare back, under her sweater, tickling up her spine. She hummed softly, melodically, down in her throat, as long as he pleased her. If she stopped, he understood he had to find the right spot, the right touch, and fast. He always did, and her humming would resume. She was a living, breathing, biofeedback machine, training Noah Puckerman in the intricacies of the erogenous zones of the female anatomy. He undid her bra clasp. One eyelid rose. "Just your back. I don't want to have to jump over a spot when I go up to your neck." One eyelid closed. His fingers continued their traverse. The humming recommenced. Her conquest of him was complete.


	2. First Touch

Puck was perplexed. Rachel not only had no current boyfriend, she was never known by anyone to have ever had one. Yet here she was with the studliest dude around making out nervelessly, in total control. She was like that in everything she did. In glee, she helped the others learn how to sing in the same way she helped Puck learn how to touch her: wordlessly. When someone sang even the briefest solo, they would watch for Rachel's reaction. They ignored Mr. Schue, not because he didn't have the ability to critique them, but because, as a modern American high school teacher, he saw his job as requiring constant encouragement of even the lazy and incompetent, no matter what. Rachel had no such qualms. If a corner of her mouth dropped, her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed, the singer would simply stop and ask to start over. If the performance improved at all on the next try, Rachel would brighten and the progress was duly noted.

Rachel never directly criticized an individual in public, but on very rare occasions, would praise. After Kurt's solo in Like a Prayer, she went up to him to say it reminded her of the time her dads took her to Cleveland to hear the Vienna Boys Choir. From Kurt's reaction, Puck thought he might ask Rachel to Junior Prom. The worst, however, was when Rachel herself screwed up. She just stood fixed to the spot, legs straight, arms down with clenched fists. No one moved, no one spoke, not since the day Finn said she was good when she wasn't and she turned on him with, "STFU, whadda you know?"

….

The night following the first bra unclasping, Puck repeated the act and proved himself a liar, as she suspected he might, by reaching up her front to cup her bare left breast fully in his large hand. His mind began to count: "thousand one, thousand two, thousand three…" She put her hand on his, gently, and pulled it away. "It felt too good," she explained and kissed the palm of his disappointed hand.

"That makes no sense."

"Yes it does, Noah. And you understand exactly why."

"Look, we lie on top of each other, pressed together, my shirt off, your tits squashed against me, feeling my cock against you. What I did then was nothing."

"Our bodies are our bodies. They are what they are and how they are. They're natural. I love being with you like that. It's sexy, but I can control myself. You were heading in a direction I'm not ready for. Please, keep your hand on my back. It's really erotic without being dangerous."

She snuggled up to him, reaching back to pull up her sweater to expose her back, and resting her palm against his nipple ring. "Sauce for the gander," she said with a twinkle. He caressed her back, kissed her neck, inhaled her perfume and shampoo, and loved her a little.

….

"Why are you here, Noah?"

"To make out. You're hot."

"Gee, you sure do have a way with words. But you could be lots of other places, with lots of hotter girls, girls who'd give you everything you want, who wouldn't force you to go home and masturbate afterward."

"How do you know I …"

"Oh please. You come here hard and you leave here hard. It must hurt. What do you think I do? I need to get up early in the morning so I need to get to sleep. If you didn't get me so hot, do you think I'd make out with you? So I'll ask again, why are you here?"

"I like you."

"You like me better than girls who'll have sex with you? Really? What do you mean by 'like'?"

"I'm happier when I'm with you. You make me smile. You make me feel like a 'Noah' instead of a 'Puck.' I feel tender towards you."

"There's a word for that, Noah, and it isn't 'like'."

[_Very long pause – staring contest – deep brown eyes win_]

"Why are _you_ here, Rachel?"

"I asked first. Man up," poking him in the chest.

"I've never felt like this so I'm not sure what it is so I don't want to use the word."

"Come here," she said, getting up and standing beside the bed. "Kiss me."

He pulled her against him by the waist, bent to taste her mouth while she held his head in her palms. The general mechanics were the same as a hundred times before, but the all-out force of it, and the not quite imperceptible vibrations of lips on lips, tongues on tongues, hands on back, fingers on ears, were utterly different, on another plane.

The kiss ended because their lungs demanded oxygen.

Rachel stared right up at him. "What's the word, Noah?"

"Love."

"Love's the word for me too, Noah, or I wouldn't be here. The trouble is, and it's a very big trouble, I may love someone else even more. And so may you. That's the main reason I've been able to resist having sex with you."

…

The next night Puck brought his Jawveh-ordained girlfriend home to meet his mother and kid sister. They loved her. After a respectable period of time had elapsed, Rachel and Puck, saying they needed to "practice," went upstairs to his bedroom, but it had more to do with "go forth and multiply" than it did with music. It got a little hot and heavy for no boob touching, and Puck tried to stretch a single into a triple by grabbing her inner thigh about as high as he could go without risking a scream.

"What are you doing, Noah?"

"Trying to seduce you."

"Are you really sure you want to? Because if you actually succeeded, one of two things would happen. Either I would become to you just like all your other girls and women and therefore meaningless, or else I would become very special to you and you wouldn't have any other girls and women and you would become a very different person. Are you ready for that, Noah, are you really ready for that?"

He hated it when she used his badassness against him. He meekly removed his hand from between her legs, instead of saying "Yes" and boldly sliding it under her panties. Looking back, he realized three things: first, she had called his bluff; second, she was a lot smarter than he was, and third, he was a fool.

….

Puck looked over at Rachel during a lull in the action. She wasn't really pretty, not like Quinn Fabray. Whatever Quinn was wearing, whatever the light or tilt of her head or expression, she remained pretty. Rachel did not. Wrong angle, wrong shadows, wrong expression, and her nose, mouth and teeth could approach the ugly. But when her neck had just been gently kissed, she would ask for more in her arousal by smiling and turning her head to expose her neck to his mouth and becoming the most beautiful girl Noah had ever seen. He would kiss her like that just to experience her loveliness.

That night, it made him blurt out "I'm in love with you."

"No, you're not," she said, quietly.

"I was when I said it. Is it 'true' love, is it forever? How the fuck should I know. I said it when I felt it, and there have been other times I've felt it with you and said nothing."

"Does it work?" she replied with a cynicism she didn't want to have, "does it get you laid?"

"I've never told anyone I loved them but my mother and sister."

She gazed at him for a while. His face, his tone of voice, the invocation of the Sacred Jewish Mother Icon, and her ego made her believe him. "OK. But don't ever say that to me again unless we're in public, in broad daylight, and we've already been sleeping together."

"Screw you, Berry, I was in love with you in that moment, and I'm not taking it back."

"Apology accepted," she said, burrowing her head into his chest and holding on for dear life.

….

They lay side by side on their backs.

"Are we always alone when we're together like this? Sometimes I see Finn in your eyes."

"And sometimes I see Quinn in yours. But most of the time I can tell it's just us and I lose myself in you. But we're like vampires. Our feelings for each other don't survive in daylight. The almost-sex is fun, though."

"Fun? Just fun?"

"No, not just. I care for you. I think you are much, much better than you pretend to be. If I didn't feel that way, I wouldn't be so hot with you."

"How hot?" he said with a Cheshire cat grin.

"Remember that time I was lying face down and you were kissing and licking my back and neck, straddling me, and I was pushing my ass back at you? I had a teensy little orgasm. I hope you don't let it go to your heads, either of them."

"Wow. If it wasn't me that did that to you, I'd say you're almost as bad as Finn."

[_Awkward silence_]

"Sorry."

"You know, Noah, you nearly had an embarrassing moment yourself our first night."

"But I didn't. And no one had ever kissed me like that. I was taken by surprise."

"So was Finn. But I'll forgive you this one time, if you'll tell me what you think about when you go home after one of our sessions. Do you think about me? Do you think about doing naughty things to me?"

"Of course and of course. And I'll tell you details if you tell me a secret thought you have about me first."

"OK. Show me yours, I'll show you mine, eh? Well," now whispering in his ear, "sometimes, when you're lying on top of me and kissing my neck or behind my ear, I imagine we're both naked and you're inside me, deep and hard. I've nearly come a few times from that. Now your turn, Noah. Tell me the first thing you'd do if I'd let you."

Puck's chest was now rising and falling a much greater distance than before. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Rachel's mini skirt had ridden up, bottom of light blue lace bikini panties up.

Turning his head to whisper softly, oh so softly, and seductively in her ear, "I'd kiss the tops of your beautiful thighs where they almost come together. I'd spread them far apart and lick…"

[_Very awkward silence, broken by…_] Rachel, in her best Scarlett O'Hara, "Why ah do decleah, mercy me, Mr. Puckerman. How can ah evah thank you enough. A gentleman can pay a southe'n belle no greatah compliment than a payah of soiled breeches. Kleenex?"

It was the next day that she broke up with him. He wasn't that surprised, but it hurt anyway. It hurt like hell. And he never mentioned Finn's auditorium misadventure again to anyone.


	3. Metamorphosis

Having made out with her for a week or so and hearing her sing all the time in glee, Puck thought he had a pretty good idea what Rachel Berry was all about. Then late one afternoon, leaving detention, he was walking by the auditorium when he heard Rachel singing. When she stopped, he slipped in the rear door as quietly as possible and sat down immediately at the back. Rachel was on the stage with just Brad at the piano, Mr. Schue sitting in the fifth row.

"One last time. I think I can do it better."

_Where I go, when I go there _…

she began, soft and clear and pure, gathering confidence and strength,

…_Touch me, just like that  
And that, o yeah now, that__'__s heaven…_

a smile in the voice, passionate, teasing, whispering to her lover,

…_now lower down where the figs lie…_

wanting his hand on her sex,

_…touch meeeeeeeeeeeee…_

a long-held high note of ecstasy,

_… no more shadows anymore_

_only you there in the kissss…_

dropping into a rich, dark, resonant vein, then

…_looooove me…_

orgasmic

…_where the winds sigh_

and a quiet final bliss.

She looked like nothing he'd ever seen of her before and sounded like nothing he'd ever heard from her before, and he got seriously hard just listening to the passion pour out of her in a voice that caused his mouth to open and damn near made him cry. "Stunning" didn't begin to describe it. When she finished, Brad, who normally left the instant the singing stopped, remained immobile with his hands on the keys for half a minute. Mr. Schue rose slowly, went up on the stage, hugged Rachel, looked at her as though he were about to kiss her on the mouth and, without a word, walked up the aisle right past a seemingly invisible Puck. That was Puck's Rachel Berry epiphany: she was clearly going where neither he nor anyone else at McKinley High could possibly follow.

That night, Puck called her.

"I heard you sing this afternoon. You were incredible. I just had to tell you."

"Thanks. I really appreciate it. It's very sweet of you. I saw you at the back, you know. Why didn't you come up to see me?"

"I felt you were in a different world from me, very far away. I didn't know."

"Didn't know what?"

"I didn't know that 'become a star' shit was a perfectly reasonable thing for you to believe, that you might actually make it. Why don't you sing like that all the time?"

"It would upset the dynamics of the club. Show choir isn't a talent contest, it's a team competition. I like to win, so I need everyone else to give their best, not just stand back and admire me. Look, my dads have taken me to Europe, to New York. I've been to museums, to musicals, to operas. I've read many, many books. If I paraded all that around, I would be even more insufferable and hated than I already am."

"What are you doing in Lima?"

"My dads' parents and most of their families are here. A couple of my grandparents are sick, one has Alzheimer's. I love them and want to see them as often as I can before I have to go away. And as long as we're speaking of hiding one's light under a bushel, what about you? A Jewish boy with a Mohawk! Gimme a break. You're extraordinarily handsome, incredibly sexy. You're very bright. If you had been 'Noah' instead of 'Puck' all the time it would be you I was in love with and there's no way I wouldn't have had sex with you by now. You're a great guy and you're very dear to me. Goodnight, Noah."

"Goodnight, Rachel."

Puck went into the bathroom and shaved off his Mohawk. He went to bed and, for the first time in his life, consciously hated himself. Sleep did not come easy.

...

By now, Puck's was the only vehicle left in the school's parking lot. He started up the truck, got a burger at a drive-in and went home. Up in his bedroom, he fished a small bottle out of a dresser drawer, opened it and sniffed. He did it not despite, but because of the pain he knew it would cause him. He wanted to wallow in his hurt, he wanted to do it once and for all. It was Rachel's shampoo. He had bought it on the internet as a present but it didn't arrive until after she had dumped him. He would open it from time to time, usually after she had smiled at him at school, or on the rare occasion she called to talk.

He took out his cell and deleted every female, except for Quinn and Shelby, who wasn't a relative. He went on line and registered for summer school. He went downstairs and kissed his mother and sister goodnight, came back up, sniffed the shampoo, and poured it all down the drain. Then Noah Puckerman went to sleep.

The End


End file.
